News — Bill Willingham

Well, after having so much fun looking over my 'Top 10' classic module covers the other day, I started flipping modules over and looking at the back cover.  Now, it is interesting to note that prior to around 1983, TSR created color back cover artwork for all modules, then in what can be assumed was a cost savings initiative in 1984, started just using text on the back cover of modules.  This meant that 27 original modules had back cover artwork [save Against the Giants which featured an add for all three previous 'giants' adventures].  I find it incredibly sad...

During the course of my gaming life I’ve run and been run in G-1-2-3 four times, and you know what, I want to do it again. To say I love these modules is an extreme understatement. They are the perfect blend of crawl, epic journey, experience points, and treasure. There is truly a perfect balance of all those things that make everything about them SO worth it. In fact, I’ve dedicated an area of the Nameless Realms to the location of these modules just so my Fleetwood family can continue to go back every few generations when the giants...

The 1981 release of the Tom Moldvay edition of D&D Basic was before my time. I was 10 when this book was published by TSR for the final time, and I wouldn’t enter the hobby until the Red Box two years later.Still, the nostalgia content for the Moldvay box still resonates heavily in the OSR today, the bulk of players remembering it fondly right alongside the Trampier PHB and the Sutherland MM and DMG. When taking a look at it today, I’m moved by the interior artistic content since it captures a perfect era in the TSR evolution, something...

If you are an old school gamer, then you probably have a vague memory of the first D&D product you ever saw. For me, those visions of the past cycle around three distinct images, none of which I’m exactly sure were really ‘the first’. One, of course, is Elmore’s cover of the Red Box, viewed in the Sears Christmas Catalogue. Two, would be Jim Holloway’s cover for Dragon Magazine #88 owned by a fellow student in my 7th Grade art class who sat across from me. Third, would have been Jim Roslof’s cover for A2 Secret of the Slavers Stockade...

Today I’m going to take a look at the TSR module L1 The Secret of Bone Hill. I once had an opportunity to meet writer Lenard Lakofka for breakfast and discussed a bit of his Lendore Isles series [those being all his L modules] which was pretty entertaining over coffee.He confided in me that TSR had paid him and astounding $11,000 for the The Secret of Bone Hill, a module that didn’t go over well with the editors and was a struggle to even put out. Still, whatever the problems in production, I think it just showed how INSANE TSR...